As technologies emerge, situations arise in which a component of a communications environment supporting one communications protocol needs to communicate with another component of the communications environment supporting a different communications protocol. For example, a computer with a capability to communicate in one protocol may need to communicate with a peripheral device that communicates in another protocol. One such example is a computer supporting the FICON protocol of International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, N.Y., may need to access data on an input/output (I/O) device that conforms to the ESCON protocol offered by International Business Machines Corporation. In order to allow this type of communication, protocol conversion is employed that converts communications sent in one protocol to communications of the other protocol.
Protocol conversion is enabled by modifying the code or adding code to one or both of the components that are to communicate. For example, the FCV/McData Bridge-IBM 9032-5 ESCON DIRECTOR enables protocol conversion by modifying the host computer. This requirement to modify the host computer, however, introduces complexity in the host computer and provides serious drawbacks. Thus, a need still exists for a capability that enables a component of one communications protocol to communicate with a component of another communications protocol without requiring code modifications or any upgrades to one or more of the components.